


Pandora's Box

by Todesengel



Series: Steampunk!Seven [20]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Gen, Steampunk!Seven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 04:09:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1496098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JD's curiosity gets the better of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pandora's Box

It is a truth universally acknowledged – at least within the immediate confines of the town of Four Corners – that an insatiably curious man, when presented with a locked box, will ultimately resort to any means necessary to unlock said box and sate said curiosity, even if he _knows_ that there's some things better left locked up. As such, nobody was particularly surprised to see JD Dunne furtively scuttling from the church and carrying the locked box everyone knew Josiah kept beneath the old pulpit; indeed, any surprise arising on the part of the onlookers came largely from the fact that the box wasn't noticeably smoking.

Still, at the sight of JD making off for his rooms in the boarding house, box clutched under his arm, Vin – who'd been on the end of Josiah's particular brand of disappointed woefulness before for sticking his nose where it didn't belong – nodded at Buck and said, "Reckon someone should stop that 'fore Josiah does."

Buck put down his mug of beer and smoothed the end of his moustache. "Boy's gotta learn sometime."

"Yeah, but now?"

Buck shrugged. "If not now, when? Better he learns now 'fore he ends up like Josiah."

Vin frowned and shook his head. "I reckon," he said, slowly, "that when JD finds out what's in there, he's gonna be all…JD about it." He gestured, encompassing in one economic movement all the ways that JD tended to overcompensate with equal parts kindness and defensiveness when he felt guilty about something, and how said overcompensation typically ended up in a spectacular series of explosions. 

Buck sighed. "I reckon you're right," he said, and he stood up and ambled after JD.

*

As was typical of Josiah, the box itself was easy to open, the lock being little more than a latch that could be lifted with the tip of a blade. As was less typical, the papers inside were heaped together any which way, with no order or logic to their inclusion in the box. Oh, sure, there were some designs that JD reckoned belonged in there – the gun that fired bolts of lightning, for example – but most of the papers were…

Well, there was the series of anatomical drawings of the human hand, each bone and muscle labeled with Josiah's neat copperplate hand. And then there was the machine for making coffee very quickly. And the perpetual ice box. And the robotic (and very anatomically correct) boar. And what looked like personal letters: some from scientists, some from ladies, quite a few in Spanish. 

And at the very bottom of the box was French pamphlet by a Monsieur Laborde and a note scrawled across the top in Josiah's hand – the letters spikey and harsh, disordered – reading: _electricity stimulates brain, transfer of consciousness possible? Cure for Hannah? Electricity + iron =_

JD very carefully put the pamphlet back in the box and piled the other papers on top of it, as though he could bury the knowledge of Josiah's secret as easily as he could the evidence of his discovery. But of course he couldn't, just like he couldn't stop himself from wondering if, perhaps, Galatea had been a test run for whatever it was Josiah thought he could do for Hannah. Josiah must have come up with the plans and the idea somewhere, and he'd been particularly interested in the idea of using lightning rods to shape the flow of Galatea's brain –

JD pushed the box away from him and sat with his head between his knees until he stopped feeling like he was going to be sick. 

"So," Buck said from the doorway, "you had a look in Josiah's box, huh."

JD sat up slowly, trying not to let the relief he felt at being found out show across his face. "Yeah. It's—"

"It's just a box," Buck said. "Reckon everyone's got somethin' like it somewhere."

JD looked at the box then looked away. A thought was fighting for his attention and he frowned, focusing on that because…well, because he'd decided to have a look in the box after he saw Josiah draw something that, to his eye, appeared distinctly schematic-y, and then slip it into the box without showing JD what that schematic-y thing happened to be. But as far as he knew, Buck had never shown any interest in any of Josiah's inventions, and while he could be nosier than a hound dog on a rabbit's trail, he'd never been particularly nosy about Josiah. 

"How'd you know about the box?" JD asked in a tone where suspicion was very rapidly being edged out by outrage. 

"Oh, you know. Strange thing happens at 'bout 3 in the morning when a man's been drinking whiskey all day – everything gets a mite confessional." 

"So you know—"

"Yeah, I know." Buck huffed out a sigh and sat down on JD's bed. 

"Jesus," JD said. "And you let him build Galatea anyway?"

Buck shrugged. "Well now, I ain't sure _let_ is the right word for it, seein' as how you never told us 'bout her 'til the end. Anyway, is that all that different from the new hand you two was going to build for young Bill Whitsdown?"

" _Yes_ ," JD said with as much vehemence as he could muster. " _Yes_ , it's completely different! That was…well, it was, you know, fixin' things! Givin' Bill back somethin' he'd lost. This is…" JD trailed off and shuddered, completely at a loss as to how to articulate the wrongness of Josiah's vague notations. It really was one thing to build a man a new hand – or leg, or even eye, though they were still having some trouble with that one – and something entirely different to build a device meant for rewiring a person's brain. 

"This ain't right," he said at last, as deep and profound a condemnation as he was able to muster. "It ain't…it ain't natural."

Buck nodded at that and smiled at JD. "Reckon you could say that 'bout a whole lot of things the two of you get up to. Like that mechanical, uh, organ that Josiah made. Ain't nothin' natural 'bout that thing. A man's dick don't vibrate and buildin' something that looks like a cock and feels like a cock but don't act like one--"

JD looked up, his expression pained and deeply troubled. "Buck."

Buck had the decency to look slightly ashamed. His hand on JD's shoulder was a warm, silent weight, and JD wanted to take the comfort offered, and the silent apology it carried. But he couldn't accept it, couldn't accept anything right now. He felt strained, stretched out like tungsten wire on the verge of snapping. He'd always thought of science as a universal good, as proof of the unshakable superiority of man – the search for betterment made real in light and metal. He'd never thought that it could be turned and twisted, that in the wrong hands it could be both the tool and the justification for unthinkable things. 

He'd never thought Josiah—

"Oh, Jesus, Buck, do you think Josiah—"

"Hey," Buck said softly, as though he were speaking to a spooked horse or a fearful woman. "JD. Son. I reckon you've spent more time with Josiah than anyone else, 'cept maybe Nathan – though I suppose that don't rightly count seeing as how most of the time Josiah's up at Nathan's he ain't exactly conscious. But still, you know Josiah. You think he's a bad man?"

"No," JD said instantly, without thought. Because as terrifying as Josiah could be at times – mad and blind and full of range – JD knew that he was a good man. Flawed, as men are always flawed, and perhaps that was the source of JD's pain and misery, for though he'd known of Josiah's flaws he'd never believed they really existed, never really believed that they would lead to something like this. 

"Well then." Buck took the box from him, frowned at it briefly, and then re-engaged the latch. 

"Well what?" JD asked, lost, confused, adrift from the certainties he'd always known. 

"Well, he's a good man. But he ain't a perfect one. Ain't no thing as a perfect man. And this box…" Buck huffed out through his moustache. "Well, this box, it's…it's all the things that make him human, I reckon. 'Cause it's all those things that're not…not things for the world to see. All them dark thoughts and the crows and what not." Buck shrugged, a lopsided gesture. "Reckon everyone has somethin' like Josiah's box, only maybe it ain't an actual box. Still, everyone's got a little bit of darkness inside 'em, little bit of madness. Josiah…well, he just don't keep it all inside. He's…" Buck paused and frowned. "Well, he's human." 

"I know," JD said, and he scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, and didn't voice the secret wish that, for once, he could have been proven wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt: Josiah & JD, Steampunk!seven, Josiah's got some plans that he keeps locked up in a strongbox, and JD is curious...


End file.
